And according to the book, the VPA had grown stronger compared to what it was in 1973 anyways. The arrangement and wording also indicates that the fall in material support was independent to the fall of morale.
Sure, leadership in that particular instance could've been the deciding factor for the better than average performance of the 18th Division. That does not, however, dispute any of my charges; it's an attempt at a cherry pick, rather.
Sure it does! After all, had the rest of the ARVN enjoyed the leadership of the 18th division. That's rather indicative that your charge that the problem was a lack of supplies is false.
Also, characterizing the 18th division's performance as "better than average" is insulting to the memory of it's men. It's performance ranks right up there with the 1970 Cambodian Operations as the best the ARVN show in the war, even if it was it's final show.
And that's exactly my point; arguing that because they captured $5 Billion worth of equipment means the problem was in the logistics network falls flat when one realizes that it's a statistical illusion. It does nothing to answer the overall point of shortages and rather uses the aircraft, for example, to obfuscate that question.
130,000 tons of ammunition in stockpiles, the equivalent to more then a half-years worth of ARVN expenditures, when the frontline units only have a couple of shells for each artillery battalion is not any sort of illusion and very much indicative of a problem in the logistics unit. You can try and ignore this all you want, but the fact is that the ARVN's supply state was largely disconnected from it's performance. If one was expecting the lack of aid to be the key problem, then what we should have seen frontline forces with only a couple of shells and a few magazines-per-rifle as well stockpile with something like a couple thousand tons of ammunition left.
If they only had 100,000 on hand, after two million shells shipped in from the Chinese over 1974-1975, that implies a very heavy rate of expenditure and that the loss of support from China would be major in any real environment of contention from the ARVN. This is critical, because if we presume that 1975 plays out like you suggest, by the time they recover from it it'll be 1978 and Chinese aid will have been cut. End game, as I said in my original post.
Erm, the Chinese shipped the VPA 965,000 shells during 1975. Those shells didn't teleport down into the frontlines in South Vietnam at the start of the year but rather were shipped in over the course of it... where they were mostly retained up north, with the campaign ultimately relying mainly on captured ARVN stocks. The bulk of those shipment would likely have arrived AFTER the 1975 offensive had ended, and none would have arrived at the START of the offensive, what with it technically being in 1974 (December 13th, to be precise). The Vietnamese only planned to expend <17,000 in the campaign (which goes to show just how unambitious the initial offensive plans were and how pitiful the ARVN had become that it collapsed to such a weak attack badly enough to encourage the VPA to go all the way first to Hue and then to Saigon) and from the captured stocks they basically recouped all expected losses. So by 1965 it would be 100,000 + 965,000. And why would it take the VPA 3 years to bounce back? They largely go to ground when the American air force shows up, remember? They don't try to keep a sustained offensive in the face of the air campaign as they tried in 1972 but rather just wait the air intervention out. So their losses will be relatively minimal and their expenditures in ammunition are covered by just what they capture.
And even if it takes until 1978, then A: what prevent the Vietnamese from carrying on and knocking out South Vietnam with the aid they've already acquired in the intervening years and B: why would Chinese aid be cut if the Vietnamese haven't yet invaded Cambodia?
Something else I forgot is that the Chinese effort was a border battle, not extensive strategic, conventional offensives that had come to mark the war from 1972 to 1975 for the PVA.
Yeah, a "border battle" with as many men and armor as was committed to the VPA's ultimate offensive in 1975 and with similar casualty rates.
The ARVN butchered the NVA in 1972, completely destroying their armored element and inflicting 100,000 deaths to 40,000 of their own; NVA commanders literally had manpower shortages after it and their units were so exhausted that it took until 1975 for another major offensive to be attempted. Air power alone doesn't explain this at all, but even then that's not an argument against my position; I'm arguing continued American support, both in logistics and air power, would be decisive in allowing South Vietnam to make it until China turns on the North and from there it's game over.
As I've said in discussions elsewhere: casualty ratios mean fuck all. Your fixation on them utterly ignores all the other aspects of the campaign. Prior to the introduction of American airpower, the VPA was soundly THRASHING the ARVN and even after it's introduction it took a solid month before the VPA's capabilities declined enough for the and even then they were able to hold their ground and fight the ARVN counter-offensive to a standstill, costing the ARVN losses in it's junior and mid-level leadership that it never recovered from. Any analysis which ignores these aspects is so woefully incomplete as to be worthless. The ultimate outcome of the Easter Offensive may have been a defeat for the North, but a defeat is all it was and one it had only suffered by razor thin margins (and they knew it). For the south, it was the herald of the end.
It was enough for South Korea, and they didn't have the added benefit of China going hostile to North Korea like she did with North Vietnam in just a few years.
Uh... what? South Korea was dependent on it's survival on the presence of large American ground troops against North Korea throughout the entire Korean War... and in the aftermath, the US has continued to maintain significant ground forces on the Korean peninsula alongside South Korean forces too this very day. So the claim that aid alone was enough for South Korea is flagrantly false.
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